Frank Maco had been enjoying a quiet retirement and a return to health after a heart attack in 2011, eight years after he stepped down as Litchfield County state's attorney.

Now the Stratford man is fielding questions about a case that brought him national prominence nearly 20 years ago. Once again, he finds himself defending his controversial decision not to prosecute filmmaker Woody Allen on charges he molested his 7-year-old adopted daughter at the Bridgewater home of her mother, actress Mia Farrow.

On Sunday, Dylan Farrow, now 28, detailed the alleged abuse in a letter published in The New York Times. Since then, Maco's phone has been ringing off the hook.

"I think I've probably talked to every news organization in the country," he said.

In an unusual move, criticized at the time, Maco went public with his belief that even though there was probable cause to charge Allen with a crime, he would not do so because of the traumatic effect that testifying in court could have on the young girl.

Despite the latest uproar, Maco, who spent more than 30 years as a prosecutor -- first as an assistant state's attorney in Bridgeport, then in the Office of the Chief State's Attorney, and later as state's attorney in Litchfield -- has not changed his opinion.

"My words in dealing with 7-year-old child are as valid today as they were 20 years ago," Maco told Hearst Connecticut Media in a telephone interview on Monday.

Dylan Farrow said she wrote the letter to let other sexual assault victims know they need not remain silent, and because Hollywood has long piled accolades on Allen, capped by a Golden Globe Lifetime Achievement Award and several Oscar nominations for his latest film, Blue Jasmine.

"When I was seven years old," Dylan Farrow she wrote, "Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house. He told me to lay on my stomach and play with my brother's electric train set. Then he sexually assaulted me."

"Woody Allen is a living testament to the way our society fails the survivors of sexual assault and abuse," she wrote.

Speaking through Bridgewater First Selectman Curtis Read, a family friend and neighbor, Mia Farrow told Hearst Connecticut Media she is grateful for the "great show of support'' given to her daughter and their entire family.

"Mia is very proud of her," Read said. "It is part of her healing process."

Allen has denied the allegations from the beginning, a denial repeated by his representatives on Monday. Allen's spokesman implied the claims were engineered by actress and activist Mia Farrow. Farrow's 12-year relationship with Allen ended in 1992 after she learned he was having an affair with Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow's 19-year-old adopted daughter with composer Andre Previn.

Soon-Yi Previn and Allen married five years later.

Dylan Farrow was one of two children Mia Farrow and Allen adopted while they were together.

"It is tragic that after 20 years, a story engineered by a vengeful lover resurfaces even though it was fully vetted and rejected by independent authorities," Allen's lawyer Elkan Abramowitz, wrote in an email to CNN on Monday. "The one to blame for Dylan's distress is neither Dylan nor Woody Allen."

Although the Yale-New Haven Hospital Child Sexual Abuse Clinic decided Dylan hadn't been molested, Connecticut State Police reached a different conclusion, and on Sept. 24, 1993, Maco called a news conference to announce that although there was probable cause to arrest Allen, he would not press charges because of the fragility of the "child victim."

Maco was accused of trying to prejudice a custody battle between Allen and Mia Farrow then taking place in New York, where a judge eventually awarded custody of Dylan to her mother.

While making clear they were not commenting on the specifics of the Allen-Farrow case, two veteran prosecutors, Danbury State's Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III, and his predecessor, the now-retired Walter Flanagan, said it was not unusual for a prosecutor to consider the impact that pursuing a criminal complaint could have on a victim.

"What I have found in my own personal experience is it depends on the individual child as well as the facts of the case," Sedensky said.

"There are many factors that go into it," Flanagan said. "There is no such thing as usual or unusual case. Every case is unique. It's what you think is right."

While Dylan Farrow's public statement is "a big story and is inviting discussion and controversy," Read said, the commotion hasn't spread to Bridgewater.

There, Read said, Mia Farrow is a just another longtime resident who has been involved in a variety of activities, and whose privacy is respected.